I am an Australian, from Canberra.
How very well I remember when the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) began broadcasting to Australia in October 1980. It was a revelation to me and my ex-wife but, regrettably, not to very many others.
My ex and I became avid viewers of SBS and we always enjoyed The Movie Show and also "David Stratton's Movie Of The Week" as well as many of the other movies from abroad that were SBS's raison d'etre. This was where my love of foreign cinema began.
Before SBS, like almost all Australians, I really didn't understand the attraction of "foreign" movies with their subtitles. All of THAT changed when David and Margaret Pomeranz and SBS changed me forever.
I believe that "Man Of Flowers" was one of David Stratton's movies of the week, probably not so very long after it was made. It is a movie that most Australians would regard as pretentious and nothing more than a vehicle for "tits and bums" as non mainstream cinema is commonly seen by most in Australia.
Man Of Flowers became one of my very favourite movies when I first saw it and so it remains. I watched it for probably the 12th time last night with my new partner and I still love it; she did too. Norman Kaye was wonderful as Charles Bremer and Alyson Best was perfect as Lisa. Whatever became of her? She appears to have fallen from sight after "A Country Practice" in 1986, according to IMDb.
If SBS and foreign cinema changed my taste for movies forever, the soundtrack to Man Of Flowers also radically changed and enriched my taste in music and introduced me to opera, which is also, not surprisingly, regarded as pretentious by the very great majority of Australians.
I bought the CDs of "Lucia Di Lammermoor" (the Callas and Serafin version) soon after I first saw the movie and it remains one of my favourite operas.
For what my opinion's worth, Man Of Flowers really is a little gem of a movie. I often say to anyone who's prepared to listen to me that Australian cinema has a wonderful success rate, given the size of the film industry and the limited resources that are available to produce only a small number of movies each year.
They are not all good movies by any means (here I'm thinking of Mad Max, Barry McKenzie and Alvin Purple to name just a few) but we Australians have also produced many, many very fine movies. They are most often what I call "Little Movies", often with nothing very substantial to say, but they are generally very, very good despite their simplicity - another of my favourites, terribly under-rated is "Sleeping Beauty".
"Man Of Flowers" is, in my opinion, one of the very best movies that Australia has given the world. A shout here to Paul Cox, bless him.
Jmvscotland.
How very well I remember when the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) began broadcasting to Australia in October 1980. It was a revelation to me and my ex-wife but, regrettably, not to very many others.
My ex and I became avid viewers of SBS and we always enjoyed The Movie Show and also "David Stratton's Movie Of The Week" as well as many of the other movies from abroad that were SBS's raison d'etre. This was where my love of foreign cinema began.
Before SBS, like almost all Australians, I really didn't understand the attraction of "foreign" movies with their subtitles. All of THAT changed when David and Margaret Pomeranz and SBS changed me forever.
I believe that "Man Of Flowers" was one of David Stratton's movies of the week, probably not so very long after it was made. It is a movie that most Australians would regard as pretentious and nothing more than a vehicle for "tits and bums" as non mainstream cinema is commonly seen by most in Australia.
Man Of Flowers became one of my very favourite movies when I first saw it and so it remains. I watched it for probably the 12th time last night with my new partner and I still love it; she did too. Norman Kaye was wonderful as Charles Bremer and Alyson Best was perfect as Lisa. Whatever became of her? She appears to have fallen from sight after "A Country Practice" in 1986, according to IMDb.
If SBS and foreign cinema changed my taste for movies forever, the soundtrack to Man Of Flowers also radically changed and enriched my taste in music and introduced me to opera, which is also, not surprisingly, regarded as pretentious by the very great majority of Australians.
I bought the CDs of "Lucia Di Lammermoor" (the Callas and Serafin version) soon after I first saw the movie and it remains one of my favourite operas.
For what my opinion's worth, Man Of Flowers really is a little gem of a movie. I often say to anyone who's prepared to listen to me that Australian cinema has a wonderful success rate, given the size of the film industry and the limited resources that are available to produce only a small number of movies each year.
They are not all good movies by any means (here I'm thinking of Mad Max, Barry McKenzie and Alvin Purple to name just a few) but we Australians have also produced many, many very fine movies. They are most often what I call "Little Movies", often with nothing very substantial to say, but they are generally very, very good despite their simplicity - another of my favourites, terribly under-rated is "Sleeping Beauty".
"Man Of Flowers" is, in my opinion, one of the very best movies that Australia has given the world. A shout here to Paul Cox, bless him.
Jmvscotland.
